It is reported that every five seconds another pet is lost. Typically, pet owners try to find their lost pets by posting flyers on telephone poles and in such places as grocery stores and pet shops, or visiting veterinarian offices and animal shelters regularly. However, the number of flyers that a pet owner can afford to post is limited by his budget. Furthermore, since posted flyers are easily missing or damaged, a pet owner has to examine them frequently and replace the missing or damaged flyers. Visiting veterinarians and animal shelters is similarly burdensome because it takes time and costs of travel. Some animal rescue groups recommend that a pet owner visit such locations every day or two to see if they have his pet.
Most animal shelters and rescue groups are financially burdened in matters such as feeding and housing lost pets. As a result, after certain holding period, pets are usually adopted or even euthanized. Therefore, to save and retrieve his lost pet, a pet owner has to take a retrieving method that is efficient and not time-consuming. Also, it is necessary and mutually beneficial to provide animal shelters and rescue groups with some financial incentive to identify a lost pet and return it to its owner.
The patent of Meadows, U.S. Pat. No. 6,845,382 discloses a system and method for identification and retrieval of lost pets whereby the system receives identifying data including noseprints of pets and compares a noseprint of a found pet with those in the noseprint database to identify and locate the owner of the pet.